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As a bit of an experiment, we knocked up a couple of beds for vegetables.

The outer frame is just four length of Oregon 100×25, joined at the corners with screws. I added 8x 45° braces in the corner as well. The result was fairly rigid. I did try nailing them together with my framing nailer but it didn’t work well. Here you can see Barbara watering the ground inside the frame, which is simply plonked on the ground.

We covered the ground with a couple of layers of cardboard from packing boxes.

We marked out a grid of points (about 200mm spacing). Then I got out an electric drill and a 75mm (3″) holesaw and drilled 48 holes through the cardboard. The slowest part was digging the cardboard disks out of the holesaw.

I didn’t have any proper soaker hose, but this “sprinkler” hose was on special so we wound that between the rows. Once the straw goes on, it should still let us water under the mulch.

Then the planting! Here Barbara and Rachel are placing seedlings (cabbage, beans, etc) and putting pea straw around them. I dibbled a bit of dirt out of each hole with a grubber, and Alexandra recorded which seedlings went where. Ignore the messy wood pile in the background.

Final result doesn’t look to bad. This represents about $5 of wood, $2 of screws, a $7 sprinkler hose, and about $20 of seedlings.